everydayworks – by Jesse Flores

I get an email from Martin + Osa every week. And every week is great. Mostly their an easy read.

I got this one a couple of days ago. It sort of goes with the fall season (orange). I like it cause it prompts me to take action and its really simple. For this weekend jeans are $59. Regular price is $79.50-$120. Oh and you get an additional 30% on all sale items.

Current Martin + Osa This Weekend Only $59 Jeans

So, for messaging, You got me, I’m sold. Design wise though, we could tweak a few things. See below.

1. I added the main message as HTML text at the top of the email with links.

2. I got rid of the tiny navigation up top after the blue and put it above the blue bar with bigger text.

3. I condensed the “trouble viewing” and added it to the right of the navigation

4. I’ve aligned email image with the blue bar so there are no gaps on the sides of the email image. The tag line was centered and added a gradient to give it a little bit of depth.

5. I’ve changed all the fonts to be Arial, Looks really similar to the font used. So if wanted to use all HTML text, you could.

6. I added gradients to the orange background again to give the design a little bit more pop making it less flat.

7. I made the original prices text a darker orange. Thought I might be could to point out the discount there getting.

8. There are more little things here and there I tweaked in the design. One thing more important though is the grid. I aligned everything. The end of the “S” in “This” is aligned with the “S” in “Jeans”. and so on… It just look cleaner when things are aligned.

Tweaked Martin + Osa This Weekend Only $59 Jeans

So, What do you all think? Does my tweak/suggestions enhances the design?

Overall, I like it. It’s cute. The cute little icon add a playful touch to top navigation. Colors are great, they tie in with the little girls dress and the offer below is big. I don’t know, for me every time time I see big numbers it make me what to look even more.

Current Hanna Andersson, Sweaters for everyone email

I got over my 40% off sale high and looked at the email more closely. And of course somethings could be tweaked.

1. The logo is really nice. And a bit hard to read when small. I bumped it up about 25%.

2. I moved the “problems viewing” link to the top of the page.

3. I’ve added some greek text with a link. This would be a one liner that tells the viewer what we what them to do.

4. The CTA. I moved it to the top more, right below the “nicely your done” copy. Making it more prominent. I’ve also added some shading to it to give it some depth and a little pop.

5. The secondary copy I moved below the CTA. If you want read it you can, if not. It’s really not necessary.

6. On the footer, I removed the “3 ways to shop” copy and reorganized it differently. The “catalog” cta is now at the same level as the phone number and store locations. Also giving some seperation between the sale offer above and the legal at the bottom.

7. The little girls thumb on her left hand, the angle of her hand just looks odd. Maybe a photo retoucher can lend a hand? or thumb I mean. I didn’t adjust that in my tweak, just pointing it out.

8. Alt tags? No where to be found. See here.

Tweaked Hanna Andersson, Sweaters for everyone email

So, What do you all think? Does my tweak/suggestions enhances the design? Does the CTA being a bit higher and more glamorous pop out at you that makes you want to click it?

Back in 2004, I worked with Edwards.com to redesign their web site. It was more of an over haul than a redesign, the previous site had no content and showed little or no product. The process of building a huge site like that was enormous.

Current Edwards.com Site

Fast forward to today. The site is a bit out dated and lacks any sort of style, or personal touch. You can see above the current look and feel is a bit corporate, and has a more engineering type of style. After all they do engineer products and is a corporate company. For a while though, I’ve been wondering if there was another way to express that and bring it up to date. After a bit of research and inspiration searching. I’ve came up with a new look and feel.

I’ve cleaned out all the cluttered and got rid of the redundant content. The navigation still sits a top, but styled differently. Separating block items to give it a bit more breathing room.

The imagery is more vibrant with some motion tied to it. The idea was that the ribbons would animate in with paint strokes appearing in the backdrop. A picture of an inspired person, engineer, or doctor would appear with products illustration that pop up from the background.

I’ve added a fixed footer at the bottom of the page that would float on the bottom of your browser window. I used this to put the resource section there. This could really have it’s own page a sort of extranet. But I’m thinking they wanted to highlight this section.

So, What do you all think? Does this make the current site look and function better? Does the style work for this company?

New Look and Feel